Crap photo.....

But it was just a quick snap out of my office window when I got back from town with a new purchase - a graduated filter.

Essentially a grad filter is a piece of glass that is clear at one edge and smoked at the other. By placing the filter in front of the camera lens and aligning the fade point with a desired point in the frame (usually the skyline/horizon) the smoked area will 'hold back the sky' and prevent it being blown out (overexposed and looking very white) when the ground or lower portion of the frame is exposed correctly.

The best way to show this would be to take two consecutive shots on a tripod, one without and one with the filter in place. But as this would need a bit of photoshop imagery to combine the two into one to display on Blip I decided that as I was simply holding the filter in my hand anyway (as opposed to fixed to a special holder that attaches to the front of the lens), I would hold it across just half of the photo so you could see the effect it has.

This particular filter is not strong, so the difference is not huge, but you should be able to see that the LHS of the photo has a grey moody looking sky and the RHS has a mainly white sky with some areas blown out altogether.

Because the filter was held (roughly) with the fade point in line with the roofline, the clear glass was in front of the lower portion of the photo which looks the same across the L to R